Floridians Say State Should Educate Voters, UF Study Shows
April 9, 2002
GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Fifteen months after the presidential election that puzzled a nation and embarrassed a state, a University of Florida study reveals Florida voters say the state should do more to teach residents how to cast a ballot.
Although 91 percent of 273 survey respondents who reported voting in the 2000 presidential election felt they either had no difficulties casting their ballots or were not confused by the process, two-thirds said Florida should do more to teach voters about the voting process. The random telephone survey was conducted last month by researchers at UF’s College of Journalism and Communications.
“These results show that the complexity of our voting systems are a very serious problem for democracy at all levels,” said Lynda Lee Kaid, senior associate dean of the college’s division of graduate studies and research and the study’s senior researcher. “Many elections are divided by less than 15 percent of voters.”
That certainly was the case in 2000, when the outcome of the closest presidential race in U.S. history was suspended for more than a month while Florida officials worked to resolve a host of election irregularities, including punch-card abnormalities, voter disqualification, and absentee and overseas balloting issues.
When asked about difficulties in 2000 voting, 15 percent of voters surveyed indicated the process ranged from fairly to very difficult, while the rest said they had no difficulty or found the process to be fairly or very easy.
Responses were similarly divided between male and female participants, indicating gender did not appear to be a factor in determining degree of difficulty.
As expected, given the 2000 presidential vote recount, 62 percent of respondents in Palm Beach County, where much of the scrutiny was centered, indicated a need for state-sponsored voter education. However, 69 percent said they did not think the process was difficult and 77 percent said they personally did not experience problems or confusion.
Palm Beach County residents were not alone in their desire for better education. More than two-thirds of respondents in 26 of the 41 counties surveyed indicated the state should do more to educate voters. Almost 30 percent of respondents in Broward County and a third of those in Miami-Dade County said they found some degree of difficulty in the vote-casting process in 2000.
Those sentiments were not restricted to Southeast Florida. Nineteen percent of voters in Duval County in the northeast also expressed concerns over the difficulty of the process.
Minority voters registered the greatest concern statewide. Nearly 13 percent of white respondents found the voting process difficult in general, compared to 19 percent of blacks and almost 23 percent of Hispanics.
Although a majority in all three groups reported they had no personal difficulty or confusion in casting their ballots, more blacks reported having trouble (24 percent) than either white (6 percent) or Hispanic (14 percent) voters and showed the greatest support for voter education. Nine of every 10 black voters favored state-sponsored education, followed by 82 percent of Hispanics and two-thirds of whites, the survey showed.
Finally, young and old adults alike supported voter education. A majority of Florida voters in each of five age categories responded in favor of a state-sponsored voter-education measure, with those 65 and over taking the lead (74 percent) followed by those 25 to 44 (68 percent).
“It seems that a substantial number of others feel a need for additional training in how to vote correctly,” said Clifford Jones, an election law expert with the Center for Governmental Responsibility at UF’s Levin College of Law.
“With many counties getting entirely new kinds of voting equipment, voting errors could actually increase in those counties if effective voter training is not furnished on a broad scale,” Jones said. “The sheer number of voters encountering optical-scan and touch-screen equipment for the first time means nearly everyone in some counties is an inexperienced voter, and inexperienced voters tend to make more mistakes if they don’t receive adequate explanations.”
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